RSSThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued its fall 2020 semi-annual report, which covers fall 2019 to summer 2020.
In the report, Kraninger touted the bureau’s second-highest number of actions filed in its history. The agency secured approximately $875 million dollars in customer relief and penalties, and opened investigations in all of its markets. The report, Kraninger’s last before her resignation on Jan. 20, also recapped the agency’s redesign of its interactive enforcement action database, which launched in November.
One of the highlights of the time covered by the report was the January 2020 definition of the ‘abusive’ standard laid out in the Dodd-Frank Act, nearly a decade after the legislation’s passage.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CFPB eased some deadlines and other regulatory or enforcement requirements in response to the pandemic, and suspended several data collection efforts.
The bureau entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Education in order to improve service of student loan borrowers.
The CFPB issued major final rules during that period on home mortgage disclosures, remittance transfers and payday lending. Minor rules were issued on various pandemic provisions, mortgage appraisals, consumer leasing thresholds, loan originator screening and training, Fair Credit Reporting Act disclosures, Regulations C and Z asset-based exemption thresholds, and determining Truth in Lending Act underserved areas based on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data.
In upcoming events, the bureau plans to create a policy allowing application for early termination of consent orders. Its taskforce on federal consumer financial law is set to issue its final report soon. More tech sprints are in the offing, as well as an inaugural open data plan.
Near-term rule planning and proposals will center on consumer access to financial records, Regulation B on business lending data, Property Assessed Clean Energy financing, FIRREA appraisals, public release of HMDA data, Reg C amendments, Regulation X, and the higher-priced mortgage loan escrow exemption.
From Oct. 1, 2019, through Sep. 30, 2020, the CFPB received approximately 467,200 consumer complaints, a 26 percent increase from the prior reporting period. Credit or consumer reporting accounted for just over half of the complaints assessed in the report, with 54 percent; debt collection and credit cards followed at 17 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
